Soon, Coahuila state authorities discovered links to other violence in the regionin Piedras Negras, on the border, and across the Cinco Manantiales (Five Springs), a group of neighboring towns in northern Coahuila that includes Allende, Morelos, Nava, Zaragoza and Villa Unin, site of numerous cartel attacks in recent years. They began to see Allende not as an isolated spasm of violence but rather as one of the most explosive episodes of a wider problem of criminal violence and systematic subversion of legal authorities throughout the region. On the night of March 20, 2011, four firefighters arrived at a ranch along a stretch of rural highway linking the northern Mexico towns of Allende and Villa Unin. The government should do more to find them. They are included here in brackets. American authorities eventually helped Mexico capture the Trevios but never acknowledged the devastating cost. Somos ("We are" or "We Exist" in English) is a Spanish Television Mini-Series based on the ProPublica article " How the U.S. triggered a massacre in Mexico. In a sworn statement, El Pjaro said the Zetas coordinated the kidnappings with high-ranking officials of the Allende municipal police department, who were present during the abductions and who carried the victims from the house to the ranch in a police patrol vehicle. Access request to Mexicos National Commission of Human Rights (CNDH), Freedom of Information Act request to DEA. He said he recognized many of the Zetas gathered there.[13]. In March 2011 witnesses say the notorious Zetas cartel abducted at least 300 people in northern Mexico, but a local investigation still has a long way to go to identity all the perpetrators - and . Sergio Aguayo is a prominent Mexican human rights investigator at the Colegio de Mexico, which last year launched an independent probe into the Allende massacre. El 18 de marzo de 2011, sicarios de Los Zetas irrumpieron en el pequeo municipio fronterizo buscando venganza porque alguien les haba . 6/27/2017 (written by Lucy Clement La Rosa)- Over six years ago, a small ranching community near the Texas border of Mexico bore witness to the vengeful assault of Las Zetas, one of Mexico's historically violent drug trafficking organizations. ALLENDE, Coahuila - Only abandoned and destroyed farms and the self-imposed silence of the inhabitants of Allende remain after the massacre perpetrated in this city in . The situation was especially dire in Piedras Negras, where Los Zetas had turned the state prison into a center of operations. December 9, 2020, Advirti EU riesgo ante mandos mexicanos corruptos He said that Los Zetas commanders then forced him and another Zeta, who he identified as Chucho, to kill two of the hostages, including Everardo Elizondo, the ranch hand who had stopped by the ranch to prepare for the cockfight. Among others, I remember that there was Jos [deleted,] the owner of the ranch, [deleted,] his wife, [deleted,] [Vctor Manuel] [deleted,] an employee of the [Garzas] by the name of [deleted,] a man by the name of Hctor [deleted,] among other people from the family of the [deleted] and people from the town whose names I dont remember, but who I know on sight, other people that I had not seen before, and people of advanced age, who they were putting inside the large bodega.- Declaration of former Allende volunteer firefighter, December 17, 2014, 11:37. Based on Ginger Thompson's 2017 oral history, "How the U.S. September 26, 2019, FiftyYears After Tlatelolco, Censoring the Mexican Archives: Mexico's "Dirty War" Files Withdrawn from Public Access See reference here. And you could see that they were unloading large barrels, and the odor of diesel or gasoline was evident. En el rancho Los Tres Hermanos rociaron los cuerpos con gasolina y los metieron de a uno en toneles de metal para prenderles fuego: "Despus de cinco o seis horas se cocinaron los cuerpos . The slowly unfolding investigation of the Allende massacre finally gained some momentum with the establishment of a special task force in 2014. Mexico has again witnessed a brutal incident of gun violence, where a gunman opened fire and killed at least 18 people at San Miguel Totolapan City Hall on Wednesday. When they did not return or respond to phone calls, their wives became concerned. in Allende, Coahuila state, Mexico, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2019. Claudia Snchez last saw her son, Gerardo Heath, around 9:30 PM on March 18 when he left their home in Piedras Negras to visit a friend who lived down the street. While many of the corpses were probably destroyed in these larger fires, the Los Zetas cook interviewed on September 19, 2014,gave an especially detailed description of how he and El Chango together burned the bodies of at least three victims in individual barrels filled with diesel fuel. And out of fear that they would do something to me if I disobeyed orders, I had to kill a person, that being Everardo Elizondo, who was about 30 or 35 years old, to whom I gave a shot in the head. [H]e was telling me that he wanted to look for the Zetas to see what they were asking for the return of his family. Another explained how the money was divided up among members of the Allende police. In 2011, Drug Enforcement Agency officials informed Mexican . Myself, and two others of my staff were driving from Monterrey, via Saltillo, on our way to Acuna, travelling on the 57 . Other witnesses confirmed the testimony of the police commander. [T]hey gave [Trevio] a quota of 10,000 pesos [about $850 USD] every 20 days, and he did not get involved in what [deleted] was doing. That was just one week in late January when the government said Guanajuato, which has around 5% of Mexico's population, suffered 20% of its homicides. See Allende, el infierno: Los testigos de la masacre, Zcalo (Coahuila), July 10, 2017. It was around March 15, 2011, the then-director of the municipal police called all the elements to a meeting in the offices of the municipal police. The collection is at once a narrow and graphic examination of the events of March 18-20 and a broader look at the combination of bribery, intimidation, and ruthless violence used by Los Zetas (and now, CDN) to turn local security forces into instruments of their criminal operations. Relatives of victims wait in anguish for news after a shooting July 1 at a drug rehabilitation center . Authorities investigating the massacre reported numerous hijackings of passenger buses on Mexican Federal Highway 101 in San Fernando, and the kidnapped victims were . Mexican President Consoles Family of Massacre Victims. Leaving aside the role of the DEA and the wider implications of the case, todays posting focuses on the most revealing documents among the facts-on-the-ground evidence gathered by the state of Coahuila. El Pjaro said it was left to him and El Chucho to set fire to the house, the bodega, and everything inside, including the many dead bodies. And when we met with him, he told us that things were going to get hot. His wife, Sarah Angelita Lira, said that Liliana had called to tell him that their uncles ranch was on fire, and that she was leaving the ranch, and that they were closing the gate., So my husband left. [5]More recently, Lpez Obradorsignaled his intentionto eliminate the autonomous state organ charged with guaranteeing access to human rights documents like these, the National Institute of Access to Public Information and Personal Data (INAI). THE DOCUMENTS. Somos. Reading Pulitzer Prize-winner Ginger Thompson's oral history of a little-known 2011 massacre in the Mexican border town of Allende, and of the role, the U.S. government played in triggering it, is an experience at once intimate and vast.Hearing the voices of survivors, whether they were perpetrators . Other witnesses said that the citys top official ignored urgent pleas that he request assistance from state or federal law enforcement to help quell the violence. In exchange, Reyes passed DEA intelligence to the criminal groups, including, in at least one case, sensitive information about a pending DEA investigation. In 2020, a U.S. court also indicted Reyes Arzates boss, former public security minister Genaro Garca Luna, for taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes from Sinaloa Cartel chief Joaqun El Chapo Guzmn. Gunmen open fire in a roadside eatery, leaving nine customers dead in pools of blood. Mexican Federal Police document bits of teeth recovered at the Garza Ranch, January 28, 2014(Source:Document 41: Forensic Anthropology Technical Report, April 11, 2014). Hit especially hard was the extended family of Jos Luis Garza Gaytn (also known as Junior and El Wichin). Among the evidence are the first complaints filed by the loved ones of those who went missing, the sworn declarations of Zetas members, Allende police and other city officials, the statements of firefighters and others who witnessed the violence, along with hundreds of pages of forensic reports, crime scene photos and related material. And he said this openly, because almost all the police received money from those people And that according to that meeting, they had told him that if we saw strange things related to Los Zetas, that we would not do anything or say anything. Isabel Allende was born on August 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru, to Toms and Francisca Allende. He told her about other people from the region who the Zetas had kidnapped and killed, including a pregnant teenager and the nephew of the former mayor of Piedras Negras. [11] A portion of the Prez Iruegas complaint was previously published by Zcalo, revealing some of the parts that were redacted in the version released by CNDH (shown here in brackets). She learned that her husbands friend, Hector, had also been called away and picked up by the same white truck that came for Rodolfo. But a few minutes later he called me saying that neither his father nor his sister were answering and that there were many trucks and armed men guarding the entrance to the ranch. The destruction of the 2011 Allende massacre is still evident to this day. In March 2011, gunmen from one of the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the world, the Zetas cartel, swept through Allende, a quiet ranching town not far from the Texas border. ProPublica and National Geographic set out to piece together how the U.S. contributed to a massacre executed by a drug cartel in Allende, Mexico. At the moment the cooking of the corpses was finished, the ashes were thrown in a well, and later covered with earth, and they flattened it so that no one could see anything.- Declaration of Zetas member, September 19, 2014, The focus on eliminating physical evidence and destroying crime scenes almost certainly played at least an ancillary role in impeding justice in the Allende case. Another told investigators that the local Los Zetas chief acted like he was in his own house during frequent visits to the Allende police station. And once they had killed the people, between [Chucho] and I we began to spray the diesel and the gasoline all around the house and the bodega with the bodies inside After this, we set fire with the help of diesel and gasoline to the bodega with all those dead people inside, and we were there for many hours until we cooked all the people, and with so much fire that it melted the roof of the bodega.- Declaration of Jos Alfredo Jimnez Aguilar (El Pjaro), June 13, 2014, El Canelo admitted to having helped burn the body of at least one victim. Several said the police director ordered that officers should not do anything or say anything about the carnage. [6]In January, the bodies of 19 Central American migrants werefound in Tamaulipas, a neighboring Mexican border state and the site of hundreds of still largely unexplained migrant murders over the past eleven years. The call lasted for about a minute.-Complaint of Yuliana Lpez Ibarra, October 14, 2014, Shortly after the troubling March 20 phone call with his mother, Vctor Garza and Yuliana Lpez managed to escape to nearby Sabinas, but Vctor insisted on going for his parents, according to Yulianas statement. Garza Gaytnwas a member of a Los Zetas cell led by Mario Alfonso Poncho Cuellar, a former Mexican federal police officer. Prosecutors said at least a dozen specially trained police officials may also have been involved. He told her to cancel the birthday party they were planning for her the next week. Much of the worst violence occurred at a pair of ranches owned by the Garza family and located outside of the city center along the highway. But he did not say anything to me. All threereceived lengthy sentences, but with no bodies to build a murder case, they were convicted only of aggravated kidnapping, a charge that seems woefully inadequate given the nature of the crimes. Meanwhile, criminal violence continues to soar in Mexico, with the Cartel of the Northeast (CDN), successor to Los Zetas, implicated in some of the worst cases. This was at about 7:30 or 8:00 AM on Saturday, March [19], 2011 Just past the entrance I could see some Allende municipal police trucks, and beneath these were armed people who I recognized as police.- Complaint of wife of victim Csar Alfonso Garca Ramrez, May 23, 2014. Photograph via . On March 20, 2011, my husband and I went to the Garrison of Kilometer 53 to talk with the military officials and we told them what had happened. His mother had called around 9:00 PM to tell her son, Vctor Manuel Garza Prez, that her house was under assault. Jeremy Schwartz. According to Thompsons reporting, [t]he wave of killings was unleashed after DEA agents shared the PIN codes with a specially vetted Mexican Federal Police (MFP) group known as the Sensitive Investigative Unit (SIU), which had a record of leaking information to violent and powerful drug traffickers., That report was followed by the2018 convictionin U.S. federal court of the longtime head of the SIU, Ivn Reyes Arzate, who prosecutors say conspired with some of the very drug cartels he was to pursue as director of the specially trained, U.S.-funded intelligence unit. [8] The CNDH report does not name any of the victims, perpetrators or other witnesses it cites. For years after the massacre, Mexican authorities made only desultory efforts to investigate. "Nos rene la necesidad de enfrentar como pas y como Estado . [N]othing remained of them at all, in addition to which they burned and razed their houses. Declassified Investigative Dossier Examines Officials' Roles in Cartel Killings, 10th Anniversary of Worst Human Rights Episode in Mexico's Recent History, By Michael Evans, Senior Analyst, National Security Archive, For more information, contact: The mayor of Allende in the Cinco Manantiales region of Coahuila said at the time of the slaughter that he was helpless to prevent the massacre. Netflix will release a series next month inspired by a story that revealed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's role in setting off a massacre in northern Mexico in 2011, leaving dozens of people dead or missing. Lilianas husband, Arturo, had also been unable to reach his wife or her parents. Few had the courage to defy Los Zetas. Thompson later turned the original report into amulti-episode podcast. Over three consecutive days in March 2011, a series . For this reason, it can be inferred and there exists reasonable certainty that the disappeared people given the time and the place where they disappeared, have been kidnapped by people linked to organized crime, specifically by [deleted] and using the same operational methods. I n the dead of night on Jan. 28, 1918, a group of white Texas Rangers, U.S. military men and local ranchers burst into the homes of Mexican and Mexican American . That we would turn a blind eye. They had brought people from Sabinas, among others an ex-federal highways official and other people from the municipalities of Zaragoza and Morelosthis was weeks after what happened in Allende.- Complaint of wife of murdered Zeta, November 13, 2014. Among the first to be rounded up were people connected to El Wichins uncle, Rodolfo Garza, who owned a ranch directly adjacent to that of his brother Luis. El Pjaro said that a group of victims that had been tied up inside the ranch house were later taken out back to the bodega where they were killed with a shot to the head. Horrifying Allende massacre still haunts Mexico. I didnt know which of them woke me up with cold water since Id been asleep. Beyond criminal prosecutions, the Mexican government also has a specific legal obligation to divulge information related to cases, like Allende, that constitute clear violations of human rights and humanitarian law, raising the hope that additional information may come to light through the countrys access to information law. (AP) MEXICO CITY -- Gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash . This same Allende city officer tried once more the following day, advising the mayor to tell someone about what was happening; that he talk to the governor. [W]hen the Zetas realized that we were there, they said to us, Youd better get the hell out of here, motherfuckers! Most importantly, he told her that many of the Allende massacre victims were first brought to a cemetery in Piedras Negras before being taken later to the Garza ranch. He told me that we were not up for parties, she said. She said Andrea, the six-year-old, blames herself for what happened to him. No one would tell her anything about the person who left the kids at the orphanage.[10]. In return for the departments cooperation, most officers received 2,000 to 3,000 pesos per month (about $175-260 USD) from Los Zetas. Many of the victims were ordinary laborers at the Garza properties. One of the homes destroyed in Allende in 2011. shares. That he and the then-mayor of the city had a meeting with people from Los Zetas. The tenth anniversary of the Allende killings comes as allegations of narcotics-related corruption among top Mexican officials have brought U.S.-Mexico security ties to their lowest point in many years. 2018 is on track to be Mexico's deadliest year on record with over 20,000 homicides so far. The series, called Somos., which means "we are," was .